“Obviously we can’t tell people which city they can and cannot live in,” Jason Kenney said Friday, pointing out that would contravene the Charter of Rights.

Premier Dalton McGuinty, flanked by MPP Michael Coteau, Minister of Children and Youth Services Eric Hoskins, and MPP Margarett Best, makes a pointed visit to the East Scarborough Boys & Girls Club, not far from the site of the Danzig St. shootings.

Ford had planned to take the exile proposal, which he could not explain clearly, to the prime minister. But Kenney rejected it in a NewsTalk 1010 interview on Friday.

“Obviously we can’t tell people which city they can and cannot live in,” Kenney said. “And if someone’s a Canadian citizen, and they’re convicted of a crime, there’s nothing we can do to deport them.”

“If you’re a Canadian citizen, and you committed a crime, you spend your time in prison. Once you’re released, and you’re beyond parole, you get what’s called the mobility rights of the Charter of Rights. You get to choose where you’re gonna live. And whether we like it or not, that’s the situation,” he said.

Kenney touted a proposed new law that would allow the government to more swiftly deport some non-citizen convicts. He said he agreed with Ford “to the extent that he’s calling for us to kick out of the country foreign gangsters who are convicted of serious crimes.”

During his own NewsTalk interview on Thursday evening, Ford sounded unfamiliar with the Charter provisions on mobility when co-host John Downs mentioned them.

“You know what, John, maybe you’re an expert at that,” he said. “I wish I was as smart as you are, but I’m not, so ...”

Ford is meeting with Premier Dalton McGuinty on Monday. McGuinty took a swipe at Ford on Friday, calling Ford’s description of community programs as ineffective “hug-a-thug” initiatives both “unfortunate” and “short-sighted."

“It reflects a lack of understanding that this is a complicated problem and it is going to take all of us — and all of us at our best,” he said.

The two leaders are at odds about how best to respond to the shooting. Ford, who has rejected the suggestion of more social spending, says he will ask McGuinty for the money to hire additional police officers for the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy teams that target high-crime areas.

McGuinty, underscoring his differences with Ford, spent more than two hours on Friday meeting with youth leaders at the East Scarborough Boys & Girls Club on Galloway Rd. The organization will get $153,000 in city grants this year; Ford was the lone member of council to vote against grants programs.

McGuinty said Friday that “there is some real merit in more police resources,” but he argued that the government response must also tackle the causes of crime.

“Police are only one part of it,” he said. “There is another part of it, and those are the kinds of programs that reach out and engage our young people.” He also repeated his call for a national ban on handguns.

Ford met with black community leaders at the Etobicoke Civic Centre. He exited out a back door to avoid speaking to waiting reporters.

Margaret Parsons, executive director of the African Canadian Legal Clinic, said the meeting went “very well” and that Ford had agreed to participate in future meetings. But she said the community leaders told him “he needs to tone down the rhetoric.”

“He’s the mayor for every single Torontonian, and we have to feel that he’s approaching issues in a very responsible way," she said.

Ford called in to NewsTalk Thursday to attempt to “clarify” his cryptic Wednesday comment about asking the prime minister to look at using “immigration laws” to banish gun criminals from the city. He explained that he wanted to bar both citizens and non-citizens and had not meant to single out immigrants.

But he struggled at length to coherently explain why he had referred to “immigration laws,” and he did not explain how he envisioned the exile proposal working.

“I’m not an expert in this,” he conceded, “but I am trying to resolve the issue that’s at hand.”